


The Scarf

by rhysiana



Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: A Complete Avoidance of the Boyfriend Sweater Curse, Alternate Universe - Urban Fantasy, Knitting, M/M, Musings on the Concept of Home, Weaving, fiber witch!Dex, possible kitchen witch!Bitty, some important fellow witch Poindexter OCs, spinning
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-01
Updated: 2018-10-30
Packaged: 2019-03-12 05:45:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 7,799
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13540977
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rhysiana/pseuds/rhysiana
Summary: College, Dex was finding, was both harder and easier to navigate than he’d anticipated. Classes and hockey practice he’d expected, and he mostly had a handle on those. But all the interpersonal stuff was… difficult.Shitty thought it was because he was from a small town. Ransom thought it was because he was the first person in his family to go to college. Holster thought it was because Dex joined him in his hatred of 90% of the population. Chowder thought it was because Dex was stressed out. Nursey just thought it was because he was a conservative asshole.Shockingly, none of them ever thought to guess it was because he was a witch living with people who didn’t know for the first time.(aka the fiber witch!Dex AU)





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> For my 1000 followers prompt-a-thon, @stultiloquentia asked for some fiber witch Dex, due to my admission in the tags on an unrelated tumblr post that I'd been trying to develop a fiber arts-based magic system for approximately half my life. So here we are.

College, Dex was finding, was both harder and easier to navigate than he’d anticipated. Classes and hockey practice he’d expected, and he mostly had a handle on those. But all the interpersonal stuff was… difficult.

Shitty thought it was because he was from a small town (and Dex and Bitty had shared some long-suffering looks about Shitty’s assumptions about people from small towns). Ransom thought it was because he was the first person in his family to go to college (which wasn’t true, but he was the first person in his immediate family to go to 1) a private college 2) outside of Maine, so whatever). Holster thought it was because Dex joined him in his hatred of 90% of the population (partially true; people were very annoying). Chowder thought it was because Dex was stressed out (and then offered to help him with his CS homework; a far more useful response, in Dex’s opinion). Nursey just thought it was because he was a conservative asshole.

Shockingly, none of them ever thought to guess it was because he was a witch living with people who didn’t know for the first time.

***

The day Shitty gave Dex a half-hour lecture on the evils of gender essentialism, Dex was pretty sure he went into some kind of fugue state as the only way to handle the sheer irony. He’d just asked some question about Bitty’s baking, because no one in his family had any particular kitchen magic, all right? And it really didn’t seem like Bitty’s ability to produce pies was entirely normal, but it wasn’t polite to just _ask_ someone about their magical heritage.

(Also, Dex was increasingly sure Bitty didn’t even know he had magic, and he was really going to have to talk to his grandmother about whether he should do anything about it. Kitchen witchery was pretty harmless, but the boy couldn’t concentrate for shit, which they’d all been taught was one of the signs of insufficiently channeled magic. Anyway. Not the point.)

He was back in his dorm wondering if he dared use his drop spindle to zone out or if he’d end up accidentally cursing Shitty when his cousin Kelly called.

“Are you calling for a reason?”

“Something told me I really needed to ask you about the warming pattern in grandma’s fingerless gloves.”

“Uh-huh.” He’d stopped questioning her weird “insights” a long time ago.

“Oh, would you look at that, I seem to have found my notes. Let’s talk about you instead.”

“I’m pretty sure I was called a sexist homophobe who’s internalized the culture of toxic masculinity today.”

Kelly choked on the other end of the line and then coughed for a good several seconds. “You gotta warn me not to be drinking before you say shit like that, oh my god.”

Dex flopped back on his bed and sighed at the ceiling. “Whatever. Shitty does that to everyone. It’s not like he knows. Nobody here does, that was kind of the point.”

“Look, man, I support your desire to get out there and find yourself, but I don’t think the way to do that is to, you know, deny who you actually are. You’re supposed to be breaking out of your shell, not constructing a new one.”

“Don’t start, I’ve already got one annoying poet in my life to deal with here.”

“Yes, how _is_ your handsome D-partner?”

“Shut up.”

***

Annoyingly, Dex had to admit that Kelly had a point, and he’d already stress-knit so much stuff for himself by this point he could probably wear a different scarf every day for a month once the weather got cold. (Not that he would; Christmas presents were now taken care of for… pretty much everyone he knew. He was sure his family would be thrilled. Again.)

So. Time to stop hiding.

Well, a little bit, anyway. He still didn’t take his knitting with him anywhere, not yet, but he started looking for projects to do for other people, now that he felt like he knew his teammates well enough.

First up: Ransom. He’d seen what midterms did to the guy, and he could have done something if he’d known sooner, but whatever, he knew now. Plus he’d plotted out a particularly cool double-helix pattern that looked like it would hold the anti-anxiety spell really well. He even did in Leafs blue, just to maximize the chances Ransom would wear it as often as possible.

“Bro,” Ransom breathed when Dex handed it over. “This is so cool. Why are you just giving me this? Didn’t it take, like, forever?”

“Nah, man, it’s what I do when I’m reading, and that pattern was meant for a bio major, clearly.”

Holster reached over to pet it. “Dude, what is this made of, unicorn?”

Dex snorted. “Alpaca.”

Nursey looked up from the couch and raised his eyebrows. “Isn’t that shit expensive?”

Ransom immediately started to hand the scarf back, and Dex tried to stop him and glare at Nursey at the same time. “My grandmother owns a yarn shop. It was remnants someone returned, I swear. You gotta keep it, I made it for you, I don’t need another scarf, believe me.”

“I… thanks, Dex, it’s really great,” Ransom said, and finally put it on.

Dex did not fist-pump in triumph, at least not externally. Now that one person on the team had accepted a gift, it should be that much easier to get everyone else to think of it as normal.

Ransom only ended up under a table half as many times while studying for finals as he had for midterms. Dex called it a win.

***

The magic-siphoning potholders he made for Bitty, after a lot of phone consultation with his grandmother and Kelly, were less effective, but Dex couldn’t tell if that was because Bitty wasn’t actually an untrained witch or if he just didn’t consistently use those particular potholders enough. He was considering stepping things up to making an apron on his loom while he was home for break, but people (mundane ones, anyway) always acted way weirder when they realized he’d woven actual cloth, like that wasn’t a thing people could do in this day and age.

Maybe he’d just make some dishtowels.

***

He came back from break with the dishtowels (in Samwell red), a great new set of interchangeables his grandmother had commissioned specifically for him and Kelly, and the new weirdness of Nursey being suddenly convinced all his crankiness could be attributed to pining for the sea.

The third time he got a Post-it of ocean-themed poetry stuck to his CS notes in the library, he looked up in exasperation. “I know I have red hair, but I am not actually the Little Mermaid. Also, we’re in Massachusetts, it’s not like the ocean is _far_.”

Nursey gave him one of his annoying photo-shoot quality grins. “It’s just, you came back from break all relaxed, and you were just talking about how you worked for your uncle all summer, so I figured…”

Dex snorted. “No. I only work the boats in the summer if they’re super short-handed. I’m apprenticed to my grandmother, not my uncles.”

Nursey’s brow furrowed at that and Dex reviewed what he’d just said. That… probably hadn’t sounded completely normal. Oops.

“Apprenticed like how?”

Dex scrubbed a hand through his hair as he searched for a non-magical explanation. “My family has, uh, some family businesses. All us kids start specializing early, I guess you could say. Most of them are on the fishing side, but I’m not. I just help out sometimes.”

Nursey leaned his chin on his hand and looked way more interested in this conversation than Dex had hoped. “Yeah? So what _is_ your specialty, Poindexter?”

Dex felt his face heat, even though he thought he’d grown out of the sting of being the fibercraft witch in a family overflowing with sea witches years ago. Though in this case, it might have just been a response to the intensity of Nursey’s regard. Dex wasn’t sure they’d ever talked this long without chirping or hockey being the focus of the discussion. He cleared his throat. “Textile production.”

Nursey blinked. “Come again?”

“Um. Knitting, weaving, spinning, sewing, stuff like that. My cousin Kelly and I work with our grandmother at her shop.”

“Seriously?”

“Yes,” Dex said, doing his absolute level best not to grit his teeth. It wasn’t like this was a new reaction; he just hadn’t had to deal with it at Samwell. (Mostly because no one knew.) He braced himself.

Nursey just folded his arms on the table in front of him and propped his chin on them in thought. “But why do CS, then? Why not art?”

That was not the question Dex had been expecting. “I, uh, oh. Um. It’s basically all the same stuff? Like, knitting is like code, and the cards used for weaving are pretty much what early computer punch cards were based on, so it’s all just, you know, pattern recognition. Mostly.”

“Huh.” Nursey thought about it for a few more minutes and then smiled at Dex again. Softer, this time. More real. “Cool.”

***

Dex didn’t mean to do it. He really didn’t. He’d intended his next knitting project to be something for Holster. Or possibly Chowder. But the problem with knitting while doing homework, a skill he’d honed over the last several years and was putting to great use in college, was that sometimes the back of his mind and his fingers decided to make something without really consulting the rest of him.

By the time he finished reading the chapter for his history class, he had a good five inches of a scarf done. And it definitely wasn’t for Holster. Not with that pattern of leaves on one side and twining vines on the other.

He put the scarf down and stared at it for a while.

Then he called Kelly.

“So I started knitting Nursey a scarf.”

“Why do you sound surprised by this?”

“Because I am! This wasn’t supposed to happen.”

She just laughed at him. “At least it’s not a sweater.”

“You’re not funny.”

He didn’t touch it again for days, too afraid to pick it up without knowing what he was thinking, what he might unwittingly bind into the fibers as he worked. Once he got the courage to pick it up again, though, he could feel what he’d been trying to make for Nursey: home.

He knew, mostly by all the things Nursey _didn’t_ talk about, that “home” was a fairly transient concept for him. While Dex had lived in the same room of the same house in the same town as pretty much all of his extended relatives for his entire life, Nursey had lived primarily in the dorms of his boarding school for the four years before coming to Samwell, and before that, he and his family had lived not just in several different apartments, but in different _countries_ , countries that weren’t just, you know, Canada, and Dex knew it made him sound like an uncultured kid from the sticks to be so impressed by that, but, well, he’d never met anyone like Nursey before.

And what did Nursey seem to like most at Samwell? Hanging out at the Haus. Being surrounded by the people he’d claimed as his, in a place they’d made theirs. Dex had seen how thrilled he’d been by Hausgiving, as much as he’d tried to cover it over it with his patented “chill.” And he’d seen how he sat in those stupid piles of leaves on the quad with a sense of purpose, like he was trying to imprint memories that would last.

So Dex tried to give that to him. There was no spell involved this time, no directive being woven between the counts of knit and purl, more just a feeling intended to fill up the dips and valleys, to cling between the leaves and vines so every time Nursey touched the scarf he’d feel just a little bit of the rootedness, the permanence, the… well, the unconditional love that he craved, because those were all the good things Dex thought of when he thought of home.

Dex knew that by the time he was done knitting this stupid scarf, he’d be more than half in love with Nursey himself, just from all the concentrated channeling of emotion into it, but he found he didn’t care. He did it anyway.

***

“Here,” Dex said gracelessly when it was done, shoving the scarf into Nursey’s hands, “this one is for you.”

Nursey blinked down at the bundle of yarn in his hands for a few seconds before unfolding the scarf. “Thank you,” he said softly, fingers tracing the leaves.

Dex looked away, feeling his face start to flame, like always. “I’m, uh, sure you’ve got way nicer stuff that you bought or whatever, but—”

“No, Dex,” Nursey said, catching his gaze and holding it. “I really, really don’t. Thank you. I mean it.”

Dex’s natural tendency to deflect crumbled under Nursey’s for once unguarded sincerity. Feeling brave, he took the scarf from Nursey’s hands and wrapped it gently around his neck. “You’re welcome,” he whispered in his ear.

Nursey tangled his hand the front of Dex’s shirt before he could pull back, and Dex folded him into a hug. It was really what the scarf was saying anyway. He felt Nursey let out a shaky breath against his shoulder and squeezed him a little bit harder.

It felt like the start of something good.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Scarf is the Treillage scarf pattern from Ravelry in teal alpaca, by me (not quite the color Dex used for Nursey in my imagination, but I had to work with what I had.)


	2. Chapter 2

“Are you sure about this?” Nursey asked.

Dex looked up from the weird new binding off he was trying to do on the pair of fingerless gloves currently on his needles. “Yes? I invited you to come, and I meant it.”

“…’kay,” Nursey said, but in a tone that had Dex rolling his eyes and setting the whole mess of glove and needles to the side so he could roll forward on his knees and really look at Nursey where he was sitting on the floor in front of Dex’s bed.

“Do you not want to go?”

Nursey kept playing with the ridiculous kid’s potholder loom Dex had bought him at a craft store when he accidentally unwound one ball of yarn too many going through Dex’s stash. “No, I do.”

“But?”

“But you don’t really talk about your hometown that much, and I’m, like, worried? I guess? Because I know it’s a small town, and I know you don’t really think about it, but I’m gonna kinda… stick out. And I didn’t know if you were starting to regret asking me.”

Dex blinked. “Oh. No, that’s not going to be a problem. I swear to you, they have seen black people in Maine before. But, um, there is probably something I should talk to you about.” He settled back on the bed nervously. “Can you… can you come sit up here so I can see you when I tell you this?”

Nursey put the loom down and moved to sit cross-legged on the bed facing Dex. Dex could see him letting his whole “chill” thing take over and knew he must be freaking Nursey out, so he just took a breath and plunged into it.

“So, yes, my town is different. But not like you think. It’s not that I don’t talk about it because I’m ashamed or anything. It’s just… hard to explain.” The string he always carried in his pocket had made its way into his hand, and he wove his fingers through it nervously. “We’re witches.”

“Like Wiccans?” Nursey asked, relaxing a little now that they seemed to be back on familiar ground.

“No, it’s not a religious thing. Witches like magic witches.”

“Actual magic,” Nursey said flatly.

Dex sighed. “Yeah, actual magic.” He glanced up at Nursey again and grimaced. “I swear it’s not a cult either. This is why I just don’t talk about it. It’s not magic like you’re probably thinking—there’s no wands or big fancy explosions or anything you see in movies. It’s just… normal stuff. We’ve all just got an affinity for certain things, really.”

Nursey definitely still looked skeptical, but not as much like he was wondering whether he should run from the room or stage an intervention. “Like what?”

“Well, so, most of my family are sea witches. Some of them are good at calming the water a bit, or calling the wind, or attracting a good catch, stuff like that. We’ve got a shipyard, too, for, you know, building the boats with storm warnings and so they won’t capsize and stuff.”

“You said most of your family.”

“Yeah.”

“What about you?”

Dex looked down at his hands all tangled in his string and gestured vaguely with them. “Fiber witch.”

Nursey’s eyes narrowed. “So all the things you’ve been making for the team…”

“Have spells in them, yeah. But always helpful stuff! Like, Ransom’s scarf has an anti-anxiety charm, and, um, those gloves there have a pretty standard warming pattern…” He trailed off, not really sure where to go from there, because he’d been intending to give the gloves to Nursey due to his stupid penchant for writing pretentious poetry outdoors, but now he wasn’t sure how Nursey was going to react to any of this.

Nursey cocked his head to the side, lips twisted into not-quite-a-smile, as he said, “Well, I don’t know how you expect me to believe any of this if you can’t produce, like, a patronus or some fancy sparkles or something.”

“Oh,” Dex said, bringing his hands up, “that I can do.” And he quickly worked a tight cat’s cradle with the string, slipped his fingers out of it, and _yanked_ , producing a sparking flash, with a few extra little fizzles for drama.

Nursey jerked back and fell off the bed. Dex hastily dropped the string and leaned forward to offer him a hand back up. Nursey looked at him wide-eyed from the floor for a few seconds before reaching out to take it.

“You really are a witch.”

“Yeah, I really am.”

“’Swawesome.”

***

The drive to Maine was remarkably uneventful, mostly in that Nursey hadn’t spilled anything when Dex gave in and let him eat in the car. He was also weirdly nonjudgmental about Dex’s driving music. Dex kept shooting glances at him out of the corner of his eye, trying to gauge his mood.

“Okay, seriously, what is with you?”

Nursey blinked away from the passing scenery. “Huh?”

“You have never once heard this playlist without making fun of it.”

Nursey made a face as he finally registered what was playing and Dex nudged his phone in Nursey’s direction to choose something else. “I guess I’m just kind of nervous.”

They were on a nice stretch of straightaway, so Dex risked a real look over at Nursey. “You really don’t have anything to worry about, I promise.”

“Yeah, but, like, your family are _witches_. You already trusted me with this big secret, and now what if they don’t like me?”

Dex snorted a laugh. “Dude, it’s not like a ‘if I tell you, I’ll have to kill you’ scenario.”

Nursey frowned very slightly at the dashboard.

_Shit_. “Sorry, I’m not making fun. Like, it’s kind of a secret, but not really. More like an omission, I guess? No one guesses we’re witches because it would never occur to them to even think it. We’re mostly just that town of harmless weirdos. None of our magic is obvious or impressive enough to bring out the torches. And we all know how to swim.”

That startled Nursey into a laugh, and he relaxed back into his seat for the rest of the drive.

When they passed the town welcome sign, Nursey sat up again and took in Main Street with interest. “You’ve been holding out on me, Poindexter.”

“What?”

“You come from a postcard.”

Dex rolled his eyes. “Oh, shut up.” He turned at the light and slowed almost immediately to turn into his grandmother’s driveway.

“No, I mean it. It’s pretty up here.”

Dex felt his face redden, which was a stupid reaction to _not_ being chirped about how tiny his town was compared to New York. He cleared his throat and changed the subject. “Uh, so, we’re here. This is my grandmother’s house.”

Nursey paused in the middle of unbuckling his seatbelt to look at Dex in surprise. “Are we not going to your house?”

Oh, right, Dex had forgotten to explain this. “Oh. This is my house now.” There was some sort of _look_ trying to form on Nursey’s face at that, and Dex hastened on. “No, no, it’s nothing bad! Just, my sisters were sharing a room, and this was Delia’s chance to get her own space, so she jumped at it, and Gram has all the weaving stuff here already, so it just made more sense to move all the rest of my tools over here and claim one of the guest rooms as mine whenever I’m home. We’re having dinner at my parents’ house tomorrow.”

“Oh. Okay, cool.”

Dex relaxed at Nursey’s acceptance of that answer, but suspected the entire weekend was going to be full of moments like this, where something that seemed totally normal to Dex now would suddenly seem weird when seen through Nursey’s eyes. He rolled his shoulders as he got out of the car and told himself to suck it up. He grabbed his bag out of the back seat and led the way up the steps.

“Gram! We’re here!”

“In the studio!” came the reply from down the back hall, but Dex turned when he heard the clatter of footsteps coming down the stairs as well.

“Billy!”

He had just enough time to drop his bag before he had to catch Kelly when she launched herself at him from the bottom landing. “Oof!”

She let her feet touch the floor and leaned back to grin at him. “What good is all that working out you do for hockey if you’re just gonna ‘oof’ at little ol’ me?”

Nursey laughed.

“I didn’t know you were going to be here this weekend, Kel,” Dex said, suddenly suspicious.

“Oh, you know,” she said, waving a cheerily negligent hand, “holiday weekend, couldn’t resist coming when I heard you were bringing Derek.”

Dex looked over at Nursey and burst out laughing. “God, that sounds so weird. Just call him Nursey or I’ll spend the whole weekend wondering who you’re talking about.”

“Boys,” Kelly said in exasperation.

“Nah, it’s chill,” Nursey said with a grin as Dex ground his teeth at the phrase. “Seriously, hockey nicknames are so permanent, I’m not sure I know the real names of at least half the team. Isn’t that right, _Billy_?”

Dex started down the hall to the studio. “I will end you both.”

“Don’t worry,” he heard Kelly say behind him. “That’s just how he shows his love.”

“Oh, I know,” Nursey said comfortably.

And then the flush Dex felt moving up his neck finished the trip up to his ears and face as his grandmother wrapped him in a hug as soon as he entered the studio, complete with a, “There’s my Billy-boy!”

“Hey, Gram,” he mumbled into the top of her head as he hugged her back.

“Whoa,” said Nursey, and Dex looked up again, embarrassment forgotten, to find Nursey standing in the doorway to what would have been a sunroom if several of the windows hadn’t been done away with in favor of shelves to hold cones upon cones of yarn in every weight and hue.

Dex grinned. “Gram, this is Derek Nurse.”

“Nursey,” put in Kelly slyly, and he jabbed her with an elbow.

“Nursey,” Gram said warmly, reaching out with both hands to enfold the one he offered. “We’re so glad you were able to come.”

“Thank you for having me,” Nursey responded with what sounded to Dex like entirely reflexive politeness, looking a little stunned. Gram’s full attention could do that to a person.

“Well! Let’s get you boys up to Billy’s room to put away your things, and then he can show you around.” Gram took Nursey’s arm and led the way back into the kitchen where they’d come in, and Dex took the opportunity to widen his eyes in disbelief at Kelly.

“ _My room_?” he hissed. “Why aren’t you staying at your own house?”

She batted her eyelashes in faux-innocence. “Jordan’s home for the weekend, too. Plus, my loom’s here, same as yours. You don’t have a problem sharing with Nursey, do you, Billy?”

“You are _evil_ and I hate you.”

She leaned over to kiss him on the cheek. “Lies,” she said, and headed back up the stairs to, presumably, the other guest bedroom that was _supposed_ to be Nursey’s.

Dammit.

At least Gram believed guests deserved queen-sized mattresses. Dex was still definitely blaming Kelly for any ensuing awkwardness that might come out of this weekend. Sure, he and Nursey were getting along way better ever since the scarf, but whatever… feelings… might be involved here were undoubtedly all on his side and he’d been doing a really good job of ignoring them. He was reasonably sure Nursey didn’t have a clue Dex was interested in guys at all; it certainly wasn’t like Dex had dated anyone at Samwell. Mostly he’d been too busy to even take any interest in anyone. Well, anyone other than Nursey.

He shoved that thought deep into a box in the back recesses of his mind and then sat on it.

Nursey was standing at the foot of the bed, duffel bag and backpack at his feet, looking around as Dex came in. “Hey. I didn’t know if you had a side you wanted or…?”

Dex shrugged. “Whichever.” And then froze when he saw the hanging on the wall over the bed.

Nursey noticed, because he was always the most observant at the least convenient times. “What’s the matter? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

“I, uh, didn’t realize Gram had redecorated in here.”

“Yeah? I like it. Abstract, but, like, still very ocean-y.”

Dex let out a small huff of laughter and looked over at Nursey. “I thought you were supposed to be an English major.”

“I’ll have you know I chose that word very carefully.”

Given how well it had broken Dex’s tension, his feeling of standing there unexpectedly stripped naked while still fully clothed, that might well have been true. Not that Nursey would ever admit it, or Dex would dream of mentioning it. He cleared his throat a little. “It’s mine. That piece. It was kind of like an apprenticeship final project.”

“Cool, bro.”

Well. That was enough of that. Dex tossed his bag on the floor by the closest side of the bed and turned back to the hall. “C’mon, let me show you around.”

***

It had been a long time since Dex had looked at Gram’s house through the eyes of someone new. He’d forgotten to notice all the odd quirks, like the two inexplicable stairs in the middle of the back hall (on both floors) that marked the “new” addition, now more than fifty years old, and the way main entryway took a weird jog to the right because someone belatedly added in a coat closet where there was meant to be open space. Nursey, of course, was enthralled by how the “formal” living room had long since lost all formality and become mostly a library, which meant Dex was likely to lose him in there for a few hours at some point over the weekend; he just hoped Gram didn’t have any books she didn’t actually want a mundane to see in there.

“And then this is the studio, which you saw earlier.”

“Nah, man, I didn’t really _see_ it earlier, you know? I want to look properly. Tell me about all this stuff. This is way more than what you have at Samwell. Clearly.”

Dex looked around the room, trying to see it dispassionately enough to know where to start. “Well, so, like, the yarn obviously takes up a lot of space.” He shot Nursey a knowing look. “And I know you want to touch it all, so just _try_ not to drop cones all over the floor.”

Nursey was too involved in looking around to pretend to be offended.

Dex walked over to the far wall. “This is my loom, and that one,” he gestured to the other corner, “is Kelly’s, but since we’ve been at school and don’t have anything in progress right now, neither of them is set up.”

Nursey ran a finger over the wood. “It’s nice. I mean, I don’t know how any of it works, but it looks nice.”

Dex ran his hand over the back of his neck and looked down. “Thanks, I made it.”

“Jesus, Poindexter, is there anything you can’t do?”

“Yes,” Dex said acerbically, “as you take great pleasure in pointing out.”

Nursey just grinned at him. “Hey, gotta make the rest of us mere mortals feel better somehow.”

Dex felt his eyes widen in disbelief at that statement coming from Derek “Close-Up Ready at All Times” Nurse, who had graced the cover of every Samwell student recruitment brochure since the moment he stepped on campus, of all people. He wasn’t even going to touch that, he decided, and firmly reminded himself he’d seen Nursey walk face-first into a lamppost the week before.

“Anyway, this is Gram’s loom, so you can see one set up,” he said instead, deflecting like mad through a technical explanation of loom anatomy he doubted Nursey paid any attention to whatsoever.

“Dex,” Nursey said when he finally paused for breath.

“Yeah?”

“The waves look like they’re moving.”

Dex blinked and actually took in the piece Gram was making. It was one of her seascapes, coveted by all the members of the family, and he wondered who she was making this one for. “Yeah,” he said, reaching out to brush a finger lightly over the surface. “Not everyone can see it, though.” He looked at Nursey, considering. “Touch it.”

Nursey reached out hesitantly, then froze, fingers hovering just over the weaving. “Are you sure?”

Dex smiled. “Yeah, you won’t hurt it.”

As soon as Nursey’s fingers touched the yarn, he gasped. He yanked them back as if burned, but then reached out to touch it again. “I can hear the ocean. And birds. Dude.” He stared at Dex, eyes wide. “Magic.”

“Ayup,” Dex said, dialing his Maine up to eleven. “Actual, verifiable witchcraft.”

“’Swawesome.”

Gram rapped lightly on the doorframe behind them. “Why don’t you boys go for a walk before dinner? You were sitting in the car for a long time.”

“Sure, Gram. Back in an hour or so?”

“Sounds good. You boys have fun!”

Nursey, clearly still stuck in his renewed revelation that magic was real, just nodded. Dex was laughing as he pulled him out the door.

***

A slow meander down Main Street allowed Nursey to return to normal via liberal chirping of Dex over all the authentic small town charm; dinner went better than Dex really wanted it to, solidifying as it did Nursey and Kelly’s budding pact to annoy him as much as possible; and then an intense game of Taboo followed, resulting in Nursey and Dex being forbidden from ever being on the same team again because they had too many in-jokes (and if that made Dex feel warmer in the chest region, well, he wasn’t going to bring it up).

It had been a busy day, was the point. Which was why Dex had been so successfully avoiding thinking about this. The bed situation.

With a deep internal sigh, he grabbed his pajamas and toothbrush and trudged to the bathroom. _You can do this_ , he thought fiercely at his reflection as he brushed his teeth. _Everything will be fine_.

Nursey had already changed into his flannel pants and a worn-through shirt Dex knew from previous roadie room-sharing experience was almost obscenely soft when Dex got back, and was now sitting cross-legged in the middle of the bed, staring at Dex’s hanging. “Why was it your final project?” he asked, not looking away.

“Lots of reasons,” Dex said, slowly settling onto his half of the bed. “I had to spin all the fibers, get the color balance just right, use a bunch of different techniques, stuff like that.”

Nursey finally cut his eyes over to Dex. “And?”

Dex looked away. “And it’s abstract because it’s a feelings piece. I had to imbue it with an emotion others could experience from it as well. Like the one downstairs, but not sounds.”

“Huh.” And then he leaned over to fish his toothbrush out of his bag and went to take his turn in the bathroom.

Dex let his head thunk back against the headboard and tried not to groan audibly.

Nursey came back and climbed into the other side of the bed, wiggling around and mushing the pillow into a more acceptable shape for a few seconds before deciding he was comfortable. Dex reached over and turned off the bedside lamp, grateful for the darkness. Then he felt Nursey shift, heard his arm come out from under the covers, and then the lower bar of the hanging knocked softly against the wall as Nursey brushed his fingers against it. Dex closed his eyes in resignation.

“Hey, Dex?”

“Yeah?”

“Can I ask you a question?”

He swallowed his instinctive _You just did_. “Yeah,” he said, and it came out just above a whisper.

“Why does my scarf feel like your hanging?”

“I…”

Nursey shifted again, and Dex could just see, by the light filtering through the curtains on the window, that he’d turned onto his side to look at Dex’s profile. Or at least that’s what Dex assumed he was looking at; he couldn’t possibly have seen much more.

“What emotion did you choose? For your weaving?”

This was a bad idea. He answered anyway. “Home.”

Nursey stayed quiet, clearly waiting for more.

“I was going away to college, going away to _outside_ , and I had to come up with an idea, and the thing I kept wanting to, like, really solidify, maybe take with me, was all the good things about home. Like, family around all the time, and love, and belonging, and all that junk.” His face felt like it was on fucking _fire_. He had to stop talking about this. Please let him stop talking about this.

Nursey fiddled with the edge of the quilt between them. “I don’t think I ever really had that kind of home.”

“Yeah, I kind of… picked up on that,” Dex said to the ceiling.

“So you tried to give it to me?”

Dex sighed, longer and louder than he’d really meant to. “Yeah.”

Nursey curled his arm in close to himself again, face now half-buried in the covers. “But why?”

Dex rolled over to face Nursey, braver than normal in the darkness. “Because you seemed like you needed it.”

“Oh,” Nursey said, and it sounded a little bit flat, “so like Ransom and the test anxiety thing.”

Now it was Dex’s turn to pluck awkwardly at the quilt. “Kind of? Not really. I mean, I wanted to help Ransom, definitely, and I tried to help Bitty, too—” He felt Nursey draw breath for a question and waved him off. “Not important. My point is, it was different with you. It’s not like you needed my help. But I was trying to figure out what I could give you, and I just started knitting, and that’s what came out. And once I started, I really want to. Do that. For you. Give that to you. If I could.”

Nursey reached and caught his hand, giving it a squeeze. “Thank you.”

Dex’s breath caught in his throat. “No problem,” he finally managed, and squeezed back.

“Hey, Dex, wanna hear something weird?”

“Sure.”

“I think I like you.”

“Well, you’re stuck here all weekend with me, so I would certainly hope so.”

Nursey’s eye roll didn’t have to be visible to be felt. “More than that.”

Dex froze, hand locked around Nursey’s, afraid to breathe.

“Wanna hear something weirder?”

“W-what?”

“I think you like me, too.”

“…maybe.”

Nursey grinned wide enough for it to catch the moonlight, and then he buried his face in his pillow for a second before he looked back at Dex. “Do you wanna maybe come over here and do something about that?”

“…maybe,” Dex said again, but he was already leaning forward to kiss him.

As first kisses went, it didn’t last very long, since they were both riding a high of adrenaline and embarrassment and therefore had to break apart to fucking giggle, a thing Dex would absolutely deny if ever asked. But once they managed to stop snickering into each other’s shoulders, they got better at the whole kissing thing pretty damn quickly. Dex’s last vague thought before they fell asleep was that he was pretty proud of their learning curve.

***

He woke up to the feeling of a kiss being pressed into the back of his neck and Nursey’s arm warm and heavy around his chest, and was already smiling before he even opened his eyes.

“Kelly’s going to look smug and superior all through breakfast, just so you know,” he said without moving.

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. She’s gonna take credit for forcing us to share a room.”

“So you’re saying she had some inkling this might happen.”

Heat started to creep up the back of his neck, and he knew Nursey coud see it when he kissed him there again. “…maybe.”

“Awwww, have you been pining for me, Poindexter?”

Dex wriggled around until he could flip over and actually see Nursey. “Not pining, not really. I was just… pretty sure you thought I was straight, and there’s not exactly a chill way to work that into a conversation, and we’re always so busy and I wasn’t interested in anyone else anyway, so it was just… a thing.”

“So I should get Kelly a thank you card, is what I hear you saying.”

“No! Shut up!” Dex said, pushing a laughing Nursey off his side of the bed.

Kelly was, in fact, insufferable all through breakfast.

Dex didn’t care.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Photo from the weaving fiber closet at the Campbell Folk School.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And finally, the long-delayed final part about Nursey's gifts!

Dex hadn’t been expecting anything when he stopped to check his campus mail, but there was a package slip waiting for him all the same. His eyebrows rose in surprise when he saw the return address was from his grandmother. He puzzled over it on his way to the Haus, where he needed to look at the dryer. Again.

The box was too small to have any yarn in it. He didn’t need a new spindle, and he would have made one for himself if he did, anyway. She’d only just given him new knitting needles at Christmas. He supposed it could be a crochet hook for some reason, but that wasn’t really as much his thing, so why would she? And she hadn’t said anything on the phone about either him or Nursey leaving something behind from their weekend in Maine.

He wandered into the kitchen to put his stuff down still shaking the package next to his ear, trying to figure out what it could be.

“Whatcha got there, Dex?” Bitty asked as he stood up from taking a pie out of the oven (of course).

“I’m not actually sure,” Dex said as he sat down at the table and pulled out his pocketknife to slice the tape. When he finally got the box open, he found a long shape wrapped in tissue paper and a letter.

_Dear Billy,_

_I had your uncle Tom make this for Derek after his stay, if you could please give it to him. You might want to teach him to make ink, too._

_Gram_

He was staring at the tissue paper, debating whether he could open it to see just what Gram was referring to or if he had to wait for Nursey to open it himself, when Bitty slid a piece of pie in front of him.

“Thanks,” he said, turning his attention to focus on the pie, as it deserved. He caught a glimpse of one of the dishtowels he’d made Bitty out of the corner of his eye. “So how far back does baking talent go in your family?” he asked as casually as he could manage.

Bitty had gotten all the way back to his great-great-aunt Sadie’s closely guarded state fair-winning [peanut butter meringue pie](http://www.darlingdahlias.com/recipes/desserts.shtml#peanutbutterpie) when Nursey finally came in.

“That sounds… interesting,” Dex said diplomatically as Bitty paused for breath.

“Oh, it’s so much better than it sounds! It’s so rich it must have been a real treat during the Depression, which is when she won the blue ribbon, you know, and people always did say it was a real lift to their spirits. Of course she had her own chickens and such, so getting the eggs she needed wasn’t an issue, and I don’t remember if they had their own cow or if they had milk delivered, MooMaw said their house was a ways out of town…” He cut, served, and handed over a piece of pie to Nursey on autopilot while he was talking. Nursey just leaned against the kitchen doorframe and grinned as he took a bite.

Ten minutes later, Bitty’s phone buzzed, and with an indignant, “How _dare_ he put homework reminders on _my_ phone!,” he took off up the stairs.

Nursey watched him go with amusement. “Think we should leave? Sounds like things are going to get dramatic.”

Dex raised an eyebrow. “And that means you want to _leave_? As if I didn’t have to listen to you wax poetic about the overblown plot of your latest telenovela obsession on our last roadie.”

Nursey sat down next to him with an air of wounded innocence. “It’s good language practice.”

“I’m sure that’s true. And how is Manuel doing? Did he come clean about actually being the baron’s son yet?”

Nursey shoved at his shoulder. “See? I knew you were invested.” Then he saw the package Dex had pushed to the side while eating. “What’s that?”

Dex slid it across the table. “I don’t know. It’s for you, from Gram.”

“For me?” All of Nursey’s teasing fell away as he reached into the box for the tissue-wrapped object and slowly began to unroll it. He drew in a breath as the last layer of paper fell away to reveal a beautiful turned-wood fountain pen. “Is it…” He paused to swallow. “Is it magic?”

Dex shrugged. “Touch it and see.”

Nursey glanced at him in confusion, and despite the danger of Ransom or Holster popping around the corner to fine them, Dex put his arm around Nursey’s shoulders and squeezed.

“You remember how I said not everyone could see the waves moving in my grandmother’s piece up in Maine?” he said quietly.

Nursey nodded.

“And you can feel what people put into their creations when you touch them. The feelings or spells or whatever are always there, sure, but not everyone can tell. You can. So if there’s any magic in this pen, you’ll know. Touch it.”

“But I’m not magic.”

Dex shoved down the desire to say something sappy like _You are to me_ , knowing flippancy, true though it might be, wasn’t what Nursey needed to hear right now. “You are, at least a little. You’ve already shown that. In a different way from me, for sure, but still magic. Go on, touch it.”

Nursey picked up the pen and ran his fingers over the smooth barrel, tracing the pattern of the grain. “It’s so… so comfortable. Almost warm. Like it wants to be in my hand.”

“That part’s just my uncle’s magic. He’s the one who made my new knitting needles, too. All his pieces want to be used.” And while that was a lovely gift in and of itself, Dex didn’t believe that was the only reason Gram had gotten Tom to turn a pen specifically for Nursey. “What else?”

The pen had come to rest in Nursey’s hand in a natural writing grip. He rolled it slightly between his fingers. “Confidence, I think. And peace. Like… oh.”

“Like what?”

“Like I should go ahead and write that poem I’ve had rolling around in my head all day.”

Dex nodded and started gathering up the tissue paper to put it back in the box. “Makes sense.”

Nursey’s eyebrows drew into a frown as something occurred to him. “Is this going to be like the Red Shoes, where I have to write if I’m holding it?”

That startled Dex into a laugh. “No! It doesn’t anything to do with your ability to write. It’s just meant to… to make it easier. To amplify what’s already there when you’re ready. No, that’s not quite right…” He thought for a few seconds about how Nursey had described the way the pen felt. “To sooth your doubts about it. To let you write without second-guessing yourself all the time.” And oh, yeah, that sounded like the Nursey who sat next to him on the bus, fingers drumming on the arm of the seat when he had an assignment due or was stuck turning a phrase over and over in his mind.

Nursey stared at the pen. “Really?”

“It’s just a tool, Nursey, like my needles or my loom. The rest of the magic is in you.”

Nursey continued to look doubtful.

Dex sighed and leaned forward. If Holster or Ransom showed up, he was definitely getting fined, because this was not going to look like bro behavior in any way. “There’s a reason we call the second sight one of the poet’s gifts, you know,” he whispered in Nursey’s ear.

Nursey shivered and looked at him, wide-eyed. “Second sight, what? I don’t see things.”

“Sure you do. You see what’s actually there. When you look.”

Nursey stood and grabbed Dex’s hand, pulling him up as well. “Come on. I’m feeling the urge to write, and I need my muse nearby.”

Dex felt his face start to burn at the very thought of being anyone’s muse, let alone Nursey’s, but he still found himself knitting and working on a problem set by the Pond with Nursey for the rest of the afternoon.

When the handwritten poem about autumn sunlight glinting on copper hair turned up on his desk a few days later, he swore he could hear the breeze rustling the leaves above them, feel the sunshine warming his shoulders, smell the crispness in the air. And woven through it all, underneath and around all the words and visions and sensations: the sense of home.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Recipe taken from Susan Wittig Albert's delightfully well-researched Depression-era garden club mystery series, The Darling Dahlias.

**Author's Note:**

> Is there a third part to this where we find out if those hints about Nursey being magically sensitive mean anything?! Probably...
> 
> Tumblr posts that are definitely in the background of my headcanons for this world:  
> -[Fibercraft sorcery](https://rhysiana.tumblr.com/post/166580717023/please-expand-on-fibrecraft-sorcery-for-3-hours)  
> -[On how knitting and weaving are literally computer code and the long historical connection between them](https://rhysiana.tumblr.com/post/168189164808/isnerdy-rolypolywardrobe-systlin)


End file.
